In the Long Run

I stock up regularly on Dollar Store reading glasses. I deposit them on the headboard in my bedroom, in the drawer in the living room end table, on top of the refrigerator in the kitchen, on the fireplace mantle downstairs, in my home office desk, in the bathroom drawer, in the car, in my coat, in my purse, in my work backpack, in my running fanny pack…you get the idea.

You see, I don’t see. At least, I don’t see things up close very well anymore. It’s a maddening and irritating reminder that age is creeping up on me, something I only admit in hushed tones. My long distance vision is still quite sharp, and I don’t need glasses when I drive. Vanity keeps me from wearing bifocals. So I have my granny glasses in various designs and colors for when the situation warrants them.

I know pretty much what I can and cannot read without glasses. Street signs, scandal rag headlines, the microwave clock: yes. Telephone books, newspapers, fat grams on package labels—definite no’s. But there’s also the limbo zone, that in-between reading which is almost legible…but not quite. I was caught there yesterday.

At the beginning of my women’s meeting at church, I noticed the pianist ransacking her bag. I knew the look, because I’ve had it before. It was the agitated “Where are my glasses, confound it!” look. She looked panicked, as she needed to play the piano, and it is an obvious advantage to be able to see the music. I quickly offered her my reading glasses (the wire-rimmed pair stashed in my church valise zipper compartment). “Don’t you need them? Aren’t you leading the music?” she hesitantly asked, but then reached out and grabbed them as if they were a life preserver. I smiled confidently, and replied, “I know most of the hymns.”

As I stood in the front of the room to lead, still smiling, I suddenly remembered that I had picked an unfamiliar hymn for the opening song as the lyrics had seemed to go well with the lesson. My smile became plastic as I realized this could be a problem. Quickly I shoved the music stand all the way down to move the hymnal as far away from me as possible. Yes, I could now barely read some of the first verse and it looked like the time signature was 4/4. Whew! I could do this.

I finished the first verse with only a few slips—perhaps no one heard me say “brother” instead of “burden,” and “within my heart” instead of “without a voice”. Hey, honest mistakes. But oh my. The words of the second verse, sandwiched in between verses one and two, were impossible to read. There just wasn’t enough white space around them and the black script might as well have been in Chinese, for as well as I could read it. However, the ladies did not seem to notice as I kept my mouth moving and uttering vague patterns of diphthongs and phonemes, in a somewhat melodic fashion. Yet the whole scenario struck me as so comical that I stifled giggles as I sing-song babbled my way through the second verse.

Verse three deteriorated still, until we got to the last musical phrase, in which a natural ritard allowed me sufficient time to squint, read the final admonition, and vigorously lilt “Come unto him! Come unto him!”

I sat down, smugly satisfied that I had ended on a good note, as it were, and the pianist handed me back my glasses. I began reading the words of the hymn that had been a total mystery to me while we were singing. One phrase nearly caused me to guffaw out loud: “Come unto him…Ye erring souls whose eyes are dim…” I’m sure my long run of unintelligible lyrics at that point of the song could not have been more appropriate.

Posted by Cyppy at 5:36 AM